


Hunters' Grief

by Radiant_Phoenix



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Supernatural
Genre: Anime, Blink and you'll miss it, Cat Creature, Dark Magic, Gen, Grief Seed, Hatching, Horror Lite, Hunter - Freeform, Hunter Network, It's Always a Diner, Magic girl, Magical Girls, Modoka, Modoka Magica, No Romance, OC, One Shot, Original Female Character - Freeform, Original Female Characters - Freeform, Original Male Character - Freeform, Puella Magi Modoka Magica, Supernatural - Freeform, diner, just story, seed - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 20:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19325674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiant_Phoenix/pseuds/Radiant_Phoenix
Summary: A hunter has found something at a local hospital. Something that no hunter has come across before; a Grief Seed.





	Hunters' Grief

“So, what do you think it is?”

 

The Hunter held the thing in his hands delicately, showing it to the woman sitting across from him in the diner booth.

 

She leaned forward, examining it. She touched it delicately, spinning it around. It was a ball, delicately crafted from silver with a latticework design enclosing a pitch black orb. The metal framework came to an almost needlelike point on one side, and on the other side, what appeared to be a heart broken in two pieces.

 

“Well, I really can’t say,” she said in a thick southern accent. “I haven’t seen anything like it before. I can reach out to some other contacts, maybe find someone in the Network that knows what it is. You said you found it near a hospital?”

 

The Hunter nodded, and put the thing carefully in his shirt pocket. “I don’t know what it is either, but I could feel something coming out of it. Something dark. Sent a shiver down my spine to look at it. The whole place felt...depressing, you know?”

 

The woman shrugged, tossing her hair over one shoulder. “Hospitals are a depressing place.”

 

“Yeah, but this was different. I couldn’t just leave it there.”

 

“Well, you’ve always had a knack for this kind of thing. I trust your judgement. Just keep it safe till we know a little bit more about it, okay?” She got up and walked out, the door ringing a bell as it opened and closed.

 

The Hunter sat in silence, thinking.

 

A waitress stopped by his booth. “Want me to top that off for you hun?” she asked, gesturing towards his half-filled coffee cup.

 

“No thanks,” the Hunter responded, pulling out a twenty and leaving it on the table. “I have to get going.” He pulled his cap down, stood up, straightened his shirt, and left. As he walked to his truck, a strange looking cat watched him. It was unnerving. He was thinking about tossing something in its direction to get it to move, but as if reading his thoughts, it got up and ran around the corner of the building.

 

Shrugging, the hunter got into his truck and pulled out of the diner. As he was driving, he pulled the thing out of his pocket, staring at it intently. Whatever it was, it had a malevolent aura to it. He could almost hear whatever had made it laughing an insane, maniacal laughter. It seemed to pulse in his hand, a wave of sadness, depression, and darkness coming from it with each pulse.

 

The Hunter put it back in his pocket carefully and continued his drive back to the motel, thinking. Whatever happened, he knew that he mustn't fall prey to whatever this dark seed was trying to do.

 

\----

 

The creature watched the shadows playing over the curtains of the motel room. It was just one man inside, pacing, holding something in one hand. He was odd indeed, this man. He wasn’t supposed to have the seed in his possession, but he did. He shouldn’t have been able to see it, let alone touch it. Something odd was definitely going on. However, it made no difference to the creature. All that really mattered was the end result.

 

It vanished into the shadows to relay the information to those who needed it. This would be most interesting. Most interesting indeed.

 

\----

 

The Hunter woke the next morning feeling drained, almost as if he hadn’t slept at all that night. He opened the bedside drawer that held the black and silver sphere and pulled it out. If it was possible, the thing seemed even darker than it had the night before. He threw on some clothes, washed his face, and went out again to meet his source from earlier. Maybe she had some more information for him.

 

As the Hunter exited his room, he saw it again. The same, strange looking cat from the diner. Had it followed him here?

 

He took a step towards it, wanting to see if he could get a closer look at the thing. As soon as he moved towards it though, it bolted around the corner.

 

The hackles on the Hunters neck stood on end. Something bad was coming. Something very bad. He checked his pocket, feeling for the sphere, making sure it was still there. It was. As he drove to the diner, he could have sworn he heard the same, insidious laughter.

 

\----

 

“Sorry, I got nothing for you,” the woman said, sipping from her coffee mug. “It’s weird, but it doesn’t seem to be anything supernatural. And if I had to guess myself, it’s just some heirloom someone left behind. Almost looks like one of those tea ball things, you know?”

 

The Hunter only nodded in response. He had chosen a table on the far wall of the diner, and had placed his back against the wall so that he could see everyone's movements. He mentally went over the small arsenal he was carrying on his person; revolver with silver bullets, Colt M1911 with alternating blessed lead and hollow point rounds dipped in holy water, one silvered folding knife, and one kabar knife. He also had spare magazines and bullets for both guns, as well as custom rock salt shells for both.

 

“Hey,” the woman said, reaching across the table. “Are you okay? You seem a little on edge.”

 

The bell rung as someone entered the diner. The Hunter glanced up, seeing only a few middle school girls walking in. Probably wanting to get some food before school.

 

“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this thing. I need to get rid of it somehow, but I’m not sure how.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes and a Zippo lighter from a pocket, and lit a cigarette. He took a deep drag from it.

 

“Excuse me,” a small voice said to his right. It was the middle school girls. They’d taken the table right next to him. “You’re not allowed to smoke in here.”

 

He smiled and ground out the butt on his plate. “You’re right, sorry about that ma’am.” The girl chuckled.

 

Then the cat jumped up on the table. It looked him in the eyes, as if staring into his soul, and cocked its head.

 

But the Hunter could clearly see now, that it wasn’t a cat. Its head was too big, it’s face too flat, it had no nose to speak of, it’s ears were long and flat, as was its tail. It was solid white, except for the occasional golden band that circled parts of its body.

 

One of the girls absently petted it. They were all staring intently at the Hunter now.

 

“Uhh, what’s going on?” the woman asked, now very confused and concerned.

 

The Hunter ignored her, trying to take stock. “You want it, don’t you?” he asked the girl who had spoken to him about smoking.

 

She nodded. “You shouldn’t have it.”

 

He shifted his eyes back to the cat thing. “Why do you want it?”

 

The same girl responded. “We’re here to help. It feeds off of negative emotions. When it’s full, it hatches.”

 

“So it’s an egg?”

 

“More of a seed, but that’s besides the point. I need you to give it to me now please. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

 

There was a shift in her demeanor, and in the behavior of the two other girls at the table. He sized them up again quickly. The cute school girl was just a front. There was much more to them than originally presented itself. “I’ve dealt with a lot in my life,” the Hunter remarked, slowly reaching for his pocket. “But you are right, I don’t know what it is.” He pulled it out, holding it by the needle like tip. “If you can tell me what it is, and what you plan on doing with it, I might let you take care of it.” The Hunter was on edge, just waiting for something to happen. He didn’t know what, but they were on the precipice of something.

 

As if on cue, the thing shrieked. The thing shattered in his hand into a black void. He dropped the remnants of the thing and reached into his coat, pulling out both of his firearms from the holsters underneath.

 

He looked around, confused. The Hunter wasn’t in the diner anymore. He had no idea where he was. It felt like he was in a psychedelic, insane scrapbook. Some things looked like they were flat and drawn, or clipped from a magazine. Others looked like normal things. Others looked like crude graphic designs. Flowers, butterflies, floating words. Nothing was normal or sane. And permeating the air like a miasma was that laughter that he’d been hearing all along.

 

He looked down a long corridor, where the laughter seemed to be coming from. Trying to keep his bearings, he walked towards it.

 

It soon became clear to the Hunter that he was in a labyrinth of some kind. Not one that any sane person would ever come up with, though. It seemed like he was in an ever changing M.C. Escher drawing. He swore that he never veered from his straight path, but it took him back on itself, sometimes upside down or from a weird angle. He was almost certain that he was going insane. But he progressed, ever forward, towards the laughter. Whatever was there was the root of this problem.

 

Then the laughter turned into a shriek of pain.

 

He ran forward. Something was going on, and he was going to find out what.

 

The Hunter burst through a doorway. Light blinded him for a moment. He felt something coming at him, so he jumped to the side. He heard the whistle of air as whatever it was flew past him and crashed into the wall behind him.

 

Blinking a few times, he could finally see. There, in the middle of a garden of scissors and hammers, was the...thing. He couldn’t really describe it. It was like a toddlers drawing of a monster, or a dragon, come to life. The fire it breathed looked like paper, but was clearly something to be wary of. And flitting around this garden, fighting this thing, were the three girls from the diner, dressed very differently from before. One of them seemed to be dressed in a kimono, weilding a fan easily twice her size. Whenever she swung it, the air seemed to coalesce into blades, arcing towards the monster. Another was in a very elaborately decorated suit of armor, a blue cloak flowing behind her, a leaf-bladed pike in her hands, standing vanguard for the girl with the fan. The third girl was wearing what looked like a mens U.S. Marine blue dress uniform. She was on the creatures head, holding what looked like an old rifle between its jaws like a riding bit.

 

The Hunter stood back, careful, watching the proceedings.

 

_ Just stand back _ a voice said in the Hunters head. He turned a circle, trying to see what it was. Then he saw the cat on a platform above him, maybe thirty feet away. It was staring at him.  _ This is what they do, _ the thing said again.

 

He watched the girls fighting this strange beast. “They’re just children. They shouldn’t have to.”

 

_ They’re the only ones that can. _

 

“I don’t believe that. I can fight that thing.”

 

The cat said nothing. The Hunter watched the girls fight the creature, that hideous laughter permeating the air the entire time.

 

Then, with a final shriek, the beast fell, bursting into those paper flames. The girls stood back, bloody, tired, but happy. The Hunter turned to the cat thing again. “And what are you to them?” he asked.

 

The cat said nothing for a minute. Finally, again as a whisper in his head, it responded.  _ I pointed them on their path. _ The Hunter had an overwhelming urge to shoot the thing, but stayed his hand.

 

With the defeat of the beast, the labyrinthine structure collapsed. They were back in the diner. Everyone nearby had passed out. Everyone except for the three girls, in their strange getups, and their odd weapons, the Hunter, and the cat thing.

 

The girl he had talked to, the one in the armor took a step forward, then knelt to the ground. The black and silver orb sat there, pulsing. She picked it up, and looked at the Hunter. “We’d appreciate it if you left these things to us in the future. That you were able to withstand the witch and its labyrinthe is a feat, but you don’t know these things as well as we do.” She handed the thing to her comrade in the kimono. “And we need these things.”

 

The Hunter regarded the girls. They were clearly fighting a battle that had heretofore been unknown to him. He might be able to aid in this fight, but the things he saw them do in that madman's maze were far beyond what he and other hunters like him could do. “Let me ask you a question. Where did you get those powers?”

 

The girl regarded him carefully. “From our friend here. It was a...trade of sorts.”

 

The Hunter said nothing in response. “I hope it was a good trade, for having to fight those.”

 

They nodded one by one.

 

The Hunter nodded. “I’ll let it be known to anyone else who finds something like that to leave it alone.” He stared at the cat thing. “For now.” He turned back to the girl in armor. “‘Who holds the devil, let him hold him well. He hardly will be caught a second time.’ You all get out of here. I’ll handle what happened here.” The Hunter holstered his weapons, and started to wake up his friend. He’d need to make sure that he drew a picture of that thing as best he could, and send it out. Maybe Bobby would know better what it was, or what to do with it. At the least, he could warn others of a new thing that they might encounter.

 

One more thing to add to the list. Good grief.


End file.
